THEATER

THEATER; A Young Playwright Takes His Cue

By EVELYN NIEVES

Published: September 29, 1991

David Rodriguez speaks so softly that light traffic below a second-floor window plows his words under in midair. But the 19-year-old Manhattan playwright seems to have little trouble making his writing heard. His first play won a citywide contest. His second, "I'm Not Stupid," is one of four winners in the 10th annual Young Playwrights Festival, which received 725 entries from writers under 19 nationwide.

"I think theater is my calling," said Mr. Rodriguez, whose poker face is framed by a hoop in one ear and an ankh in the other. In many ways he embodies the hopes behind the festival, which was established by Stephen Sondheim and the Foundation of the Dramatists Guild to find and nurture young talent.

Mr. Rodriguez was a junior at Julia Richman High School in Manhattan when his first play received a professionally staged reading at the festival two years ago. The experience, he said, hooked him on the "intimacy of the theater." Under contract to Fox Television for a screenplay about minority youth in New York City, he is now a student at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he plans to major in dramatic writing.

His play and the three other winning one-acts, all by 18-year-olds, are in previews at Playwrights Horizons, where they have been given professional productions. Directed by Mark Brokaw, Michael Meyer, Gloria Muzio and Seret Scott, the program, performed in one evening, formally opens Wednesday for a three-week run. Previous winners have had plays produced at the South Coast Repertory in California and at Manhattan Punch Line, among other theaters.

"We don't treat the scripts any differently than we do those of professional playwrights," said Nancy Quinn, the festival's producing director. "As far as we're concerned, the young writers are playwrights with something to say."

In "Secrets to Square Dancing," another winning play this year, Denise Maher of Metuchen, N.J., satirizes standardized tests and school bureaucrats. Matthew Peterson, a native of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, presents a character in "Donut World," whose life revolves around his dog, the railroads and bargain doughnuts. In "Man at His Best," Carlota Zimmerman of New York explores the effects of physical and emotional imprisonment on two male characters.

Mr. Rodriguez, who lives in an N.Y.U. dorm, grew up in Inwood. "That's all the way in the forgotten zone of Manhattan," he said. His mother, a native of the Dominican Republic, raised him and his two brothers (the eldest attends Colgate University) on public assistance. Her recourse against the perils of a neighborhood notorious for drug deals and gunplay was to shut the world out. "My mother kept us inside," he said, seeming to flinch at the memory. "She always stressed education. She was really strict with us."

"I'm Not Stupid" is a drama about the tattered lives of a woman and her mentally disabled son and the psychiatrist who tries to mend them. The character of the son, Mr. Rodriguez said, was in part inspired by his 14-year-old brother, who is autistic.

"I'm like a stenographer receiving dictation," he said. "The play doesn't begin to take shape until I'm in the middle of it." For him, opening-night jitters are becoming common: "I just continue writing like a maniac."

Photo: David Rodriguez -- "I'm like a stenographer receiving dictation." (Vic DeLucia/The New York Times)